


conspire against the odds

by ShippingEverything



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Hanschen And Thea Are Siblings, M/M, Mentions of Superman even though the author is a marvel girl, also he has some sort of sound manipulation but it never really comes up!, flowernst! sort of!, i had big plans for this fic but i want to be f r e e
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippingEverything/pseuds/ShippingEverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as good with plants as you are, petal,” Hanschen smirks, “Well, unless you count two-lips.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Flytrap groans theatrically and opens his mouth to reply before physically stopping himself with a hand. <b>THAT WAS HORRIBLE</b>, the flowers exclaim, despite the tell-tale crinkle of Flytrap’s eyes. Hanschen sighs fondly.</i>
</p>
<p>Or: The superhero au that no one asked for</p>
            </blockquote>





	conspire against the odds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PheebsHB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PheebsHB/gifts).



> For phoebe's prompt, “Well this is awkward…”, a superhero au <3 completely unfitting title from the lyrics of 'This is Gospel' because my little sis told me i should title it that way
> 
> please enjoy!!!

Hanschen doesn’t know when people stopped being too afraid to make fun of him, but he realizes it when he hears one of the interns refer to him as ‘Lois Lane’.

It’s not that they’re particularly off the mark; he covers the most dangerous stories and the city’s resident superhero seems to have a particular affection for him, but he’s quite sure that his ‘Man of Steel’ isn’t anyone else at the station (Hanschen doesn’t, after all, forget what a pair of lips feel like) but he still doesn’t want people calling him Lois Lane behind his back.

“Wendla-”

“No, Hanschen,” Wendla says, without looking up from her paperwork but with the type of sigh that comes naturally after years of being Hanschen Rilow’s boss and friend. “I can’t fire people just because they’ve offended your delicate sensibilities.”

Hanschen slides into one of the plush chairs in front of her desk. “But they’re calling me _Lois_.”

Wendla looks up with a raised eyebrow. “They do know that Superman has super strength and laser eyes, not plants and siren song, right?”

“It’s sound manipulation,” Hanschen automatically corrects, and then scowls when he sees Wendla grin. “ _Look_ , the point isn’t whether or not I know his powers, but that I want them to _stop_. What use is being friends with the boss if I can’t use you to terrify others into submission?”

Wendla hums delicately. “Well, you could always ask Clark Kent to terrify them for y-hey!”

Hanschen tosses another eraser at her (And why does she have so many erasers in her office?) and huffs, tossing “See if I volunteer to do ads for the station!” over his shoulder.

“I’ll just make you do them!” Wendla yells back, still laughing, “They’re in your contract!”

* * *

Hanschen isn’t accident prone. Before Flytrap came into the picture, with his powers and his mask and his fucking _plants_ , Hanschen’s job had gone smoothly; he went into dangerous situations, interviewed a few people—maybe even romanced someone—and smoothly glided back out without even a scratch, but now every paper in the city has started circulating that he’s a superhero’s boyfriend (Which isn’t even _true_ , kissing once or twice or several times does not a boyfriend make) and he’s gotten closer to injury than ever before.

“We have _got_ to stop meeting like this,” Hanschen says when Flytrap uses plants to somehow break his handcuffs. Flytrap grins at him but doesn’t respond. Hanschen isn’t sure why, since Flytrap can definitely control when he uses the Siren Speech and seems fine talking to anyone else, but Flytrap hasn’t spoken a word to Hanschen since the ‘Hi! I’m here to save you’ when they first met at that bank hostage crisis.

Hanschen flexes his wrists and looks down at the plants at his feet, spelling out _ARE YOU OKAY?_ in tiny white flowers.

“While it’s sweet of them to be concerned, you can tell the,” Hanschen pauses, recalling the many (many, many, _many_ ) flower identification sites that he’s looked at in the last few months, “Daisies that I’m fine.”

Flytrap rolls his eyes and a set of purple flowers pop up to say _THEY’RE CHAMOMILES_.

“Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as good with plants as you are, petal,” Hanschen smirks, “Well, unless you count two-lips.”

Flytrap groans theatrically and opens his mouth to reply before physically stopping himself with a hand. _THAT WAS HORRIBLE_ , the flowers exclaim, despite the tell-tale crinkle of Flytrap’s eyes. Hanschen sighs fondly.

“Well, are you up to giving me an interview yet or-” Nine different types of flowers spell out enthusiastic _NO_ s. Hanschen sighs and Flytrap smiles so apologetically that Hanschen just _has_ to kiss him. After a lingering second (or two, or three, or four), he says, “Fine. But I will get that interview out of you one day. You’re ruining my reputation you know, the whole office is making fun of me because I can’t get my _boyfriend_ to talk to our station.”

Flytrap flushes and laughs, and Hanschen has to kiss him again to calm the butterflies in his stomach.

* * *

“Have you seen the new temp?”

Thea splays herself upon Hanschen’s desk, which is less than ideal when he’s trying to finish up this article before 4.

“I haven’t left my desk.”

Thea frowns at him. “I told you to be more social. Even Lois Lane was friends with that one cameraman.”

“Are you saying that the intern should be my Jimmy Olsen? Wouldn’t I need a Clark Kent for that?” Hanschen has given up trying to get people to stop with the Superman jokes.

“Look, just _make friends_. He’s coming this way now.”

Hanschen rolls his eyes and goes back to his work with even more vigour, ignoring Thea and the temp, until Thea stomps on his foot. He turns to snap at her, and stops short because the temp is _gorgeous_. Tall and lanky and he’d probably be incredibly average, if not for his earnest expression and his incredibly pretty, deep brown eyes.

“Hi,” He says in his very best flirting voice, “I’m Hanschen Rilow. You are?”

The temp blinks a few times, long lashes fluttering prettily. “Ernst Robel. I’m the new temp? And I made cookies?”

Hanschen grabs one and takes a bite, making a delighted noise. He smirks at Thea’s muffled groan and the way that Ernst’s ears redden. “These are _delicious_ ,” Hanschen hums, pleased, “And you made them? You must be good with your hands.”

“I, um!” Ernst flushes more, whiteknuckled on the cookie plate, “I have to go!”

He runs away and there’s a pause for Hanschen to rest in smug satisfaction, before Thea hits him in the head with a stack of papers. “What the fuck.”

“You told me to make friends,” He drawls.

“I told you to make _friends_ ,” Thea hisses, “Not seduce the temp!”

Hanschen shrugs, “Friends with benefits are still friends, sister dear.”

Thea throws him an unimpressed glare. “If he quits because of workplace harassment, I’m going to throw you off of the roof.”

Thea huffs away and Hanschen turns back to his work, but he can’t quite get Ernst out of his head. He had had the most _remarkable_ eyes.

* * *

 

“‘Phaestus, you dick, stop trying to eat the aloe!”

Hephaestus blinks at him disdainfully, but jumps off of the plant box to settle down next to Aphrodite and Hera. Hanschen’s apartment is nice and he likes to leave the balcony door open on days that the sun decides to grace the city with it’s presence. However, that also means that he has to let his cats roam on the balcony, and that puts his growing collection of potted plants at risk. In their defenses, the balcony _is_ slowly but surely becoming more garden than anything, leaving little for the cats to do but try to consume ivy and petunia alike. Hanschen really should get rid of some of them, but… they _were_ gifts.

“Hanschen, you have a problem,” Thea wanders out with Apollo and Artemis at her heels. “There are too many cats here.”

Hanschen bends down and gathers Hera up, ignoring her displeasure. “There’s no such thing as a cat problem.”

“Then you have a plant problem.”

Thea says it with a pointed kick at the nearest pot, and Hanschen is very nearly hissing when he says, “ _Get away from my chrysanthemums_.”

Thea takes a step back, as do the cats. Hanschen closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“... You’re in deep, little bro,” Thea says finally.

“We’re twins.”

“Don’t try and change the subject,” Thea says, then, “When are you going to see him again?”

“When’s the next time some crazy person will try to use me as bait?” Hanschen replies, sharper than necessary.

Thea pats him gently on the shoulder. “You’ll be okay, baby bro.”

Hanschen doesn’t bother to try and correct her on either statement.

* * *

 

“Are you, um, okay?”

It’s Hanschen’s third day of Wendla-imposed desk work, he's miserable without the numbness of painkillers, and his arm itches under the cast. He’s sure that Ernst means well, but he’s not in the mood to be polite.

“Do I _look_ okay?” Hanschen asks with a sharp glare.

“I just wanted to know what happened? You seemed fine the other day- I mean, from what the cameras showed on TV,” Ernst laughs awkwardly. “Because I didn’t see you in person that day. Obviously.”

“I got caught on a vine on my way out of the bank,” Hanschen says. “It’s only a small break, but it’s still enough for Wendla to give my fieldwork to Gabor and Thea.”

Ernst makes a sad noise and runs away, which is _weird_ , but okay. Hanschen sighs and goes back to his pile of papers until he hears a chair being wheeled up next to his. Hanschen looks up to see Ernst smiling sheepishly at him.

“Is it okay if I sit here?”

Hanschen moves his pile over so there’s room. Ernst grins and scoots in, babbling while he does his paperwork. Maybe desk duty isn’t _that_ bad.

* * *

Things calm down. Hanschen still gets kidnapped or held hostage or threatened, but he’s been taking self-defense classes and he took out that douchebag with the gun last week without putting down his bag of groceries, so it’s fine.

Until Flytrap shows up at the station.

Hanschen’s first warning is the frenzied squeak from Moritz, but Moritz is pretty much constantly screaming, so he ignores it. After that, his phone starts ringing but he _really_ needs to finish up this story, so he takes it off the hook. Finally, Wendla runs to his desk and yells “Flytrap said he’ll do an interview but only with you and if you aren’t in the booth in five minutes, I’m going to set you on fire, I swear to god.”

Hanschen goes to the booth.

The crew is getting Flytrap ready for the screen and it seems like Melchior is trying to convince Flytrap to take off his mask, to no avail. Flytrap is looking around, probably for rescue, and when he sees Hanschen he waves and gigantic bouquet (Probably from Wendla) that the intern is holding blooms more brilliantly.

“Hey there,” Hanschen says and he can feel the smile tugging at his lips and he knows that after this, the remaining strands of his Super Scary office reputation will be destroyed. “You do know that an interview entrails actually talking to me, right?”

“I mean, I could just use one of those ‘thought to type’ things, if I really wanted to,” Flytrap says and _Hanschen knows that voice_.

“Holy _shit_ ,” He says, involuntarily, before, “I can’t believe I didn't put this together sooner.”

Flytrap—or, rather, _Ernst_ , holy shit—pales, but everyone else looks confused

“Flytrap and I have to do some interview prep!” Hanschen says as he pulls Ernst up and towards the utility closet.

Melchior yells “No bodily fluids allowed in the closet!” But the door closes before Hanschen can flip him off, which is actually fine because _holy shit_ , there are more important things for him to focus on.

“So,” Ernst says, his mask receding to vines behind his ears, “This is awkward.”

“Oh, really, because I thought that this was _completely normal_!” Hanschen says, and he knows he’s pouting but _this is ridiculous_. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ernst looks down at his hands, at the flowers that have begun to bloom from his gloves, and sighs. “I mean, at first it was the secret identity thing, and then, well… I heard you complain about me so often that I didn’t think it’d be a good idea. And I was already doing the whole ‘not talking’ thing, so.”

Hanschen blinks, then turns Ernst back to look at him. “You thought I didn’t like you?”

“I think you don’t like _Flytrap_ ,” Ernst corrects, “It’s sort of different.”

“I don’t not like Flytrap, or you, I-” Hanschen breaks off and runs a hand over his face. “I have five cats and a small balcony and I still keep every single one of the  plants that you gave me. It’s becoming a problem and they’ve started invading my apartment and Thea asked if she could have a pot of them but I said no because they’re _mine_ , because _you_ gave them to me, and-”

Ernst takes Hanschen’s hands and Hanschen opens his eyes ( _When did they close?_ ). “And you don’t not like me?”

Ernst is smiling softly, his voice almost teasing. Hanschen kisses Ernst because, well, that’s what he’s wanted to do since he first saw him. It’s different from kissing Flytrap—softer, more tentative, better.

Hanschen can’t even find it in himself to be upset when Wendla opens the door and yells at him for fooling around with his boyfriend instead of doing his job. Ernst—or Flytrap, rather—is worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank the lord that this is done amirite
> 
> Hanschen's cats are as followed: [Hephaestus](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/82/59/34/8259346f6e8cf13292b9d42515cf1003.jpg), [Aphrodite](https://www.petinsurance.com/healthzone/pet-articles/pet-breeds/~/media/All%20PHZ%20Images/Article%20images/Egyptian%20Mau3.ashx), [Hera](http://www.life-with-siamese-cats.com/images/applehead-siamese-cats-02.jpg), [Artemis, and Apollo](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-95mSQjsKUBs/UY9ZSHI5beI/AAAAAAAAAJg/itHUU9yYgXw/s1600/Abyssinian-kittens.png)
> 
> [Prompt me!](http://nacreousglowclouds.tumblr.com) | [ My Main ](http://bisexualwilliampoindexter.tumblr.com)


End file.
